Roland Penner (July 30, 1924 – May 31, 2018) was a Canadian political activist and lawyer who became a cabinet minister in the Manitoba provincial government and dean of law at the University of Manitoba. the son of Winnipeg alderman Jacob Penner His father was from a Mennonite background, and his mother was Jewish. He served in Europe during World War II in the Canadian artillery. In 1949, he married Adeline ("Addie") Wdoviak, and in 1982, he married Janet Kay Baldwin. He also ran as an LPP candidate for school trustee in the Winnipeg municipal election of 1953.
Penner left the Labour-Progressive Party in 1961, part of a mass exodus in the years following the Soviet invasion of Hungary and Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech on Joseph Stalin's crimes. His brother Norman had left in 1957, while his father Jacob remained a party member. Penner completed law school and practised criminal law for several years before becoming a law professor.
In 1980, he announced that he would seek the nomination of the New Democratic Party in the riding of St. Johns in the 1981 election. There was some speculation that Penner's communist past would damage his political ambitions, especially as Winnipeg alderman Joe Zuken had lost a mayoral election the previous year when his communist politics became an issue. Penner rejected this suggestion, however, saying, "There's a fundamental difference between Joe and myself in that I'm not a member of the Communist Party. I'm a member of the NDP. [...] I was a member of the Communist Party at one time, but that's ancient history. That was twenty years ago. It may be raised but it's not relevant. It would ignore what I've been doing the last two decades." He later chose not to run in St. Johns, and sought another riding. The party wanted him to run against Progressive Party leader Sid Green in the riding of Inkster. He declined and ran instead in Fort Rouge, where he defeated incumbent Liberal June Westbury. (The latter action resulted in a backlash in some parts of the province, leading to the rise of anti-bilingualism groups such as the Confederation of Regions Party.) As minister responsible for constitutional affairs, Penner also participated in negotiations for what became the Meech Lake Accord.
In 2007, Penner published A Glowing Dream: A Memoir (Winnipeg: J. Gordon Shillingford Publishing, 2007). He died on May 31, 2018 in Winnipeg.
Honours
In 2000, he was named to the Order of Canada. In 2014, he was made a member of the Order of Manitoba.